The Internet provides access to many different sources of information. Many commercial concerns and organizations have recognized the value of the Internet in providing broad access to information concerning, for example, their respective products, services, location, contact information, purposes, goals, qualifications and more. The world wide web (WWW) is one component of the Internet that is widely used by people, companies or organizations to publish information in the form of web sites, or web pages. Often times, companies and organizations will adopt a domain name that is used, for example, as the uniform resource locator (URL) for accessing, for example, a web site associated with the particular company or organization. This domain/URL may correspond to, for example, the name of their company, organization, product line or related theme, for example. As a result, it is well known by many users of the Internet that when searching for information on a particular organization or company, the company name (product name, etc.) itself may in fact constitute the main part of the URL that would allow access to that company's/organizations web site. In view of this it is often common for a user to make a first attempt at accessing a company/organizations' web site by specifying, for example, the company or organization name, product name or common variations thereon as a part of the specified URL to be accessed using, for example, a web browser.
More particularly, as an example, where a company's name is, for example, “The Big Shop”, a user may make a first attempt to access an associated web site by specifying a URL such as: “WWW.THEBIGSHOP.COM”, or “WWW.BIGSHOP.COM”. If this URL is valid, the web page that corresponds to the URL will be accessed, retrieved and displayed for the viewer to peruse. However, the web page accessed may or may not be a web page that is actually associated with the particular company “The Big Shop”.
Thus, the first attempts of specifying a web site URL in this way may be unsuccessful in accessing the web page associated with the desired company, organization or product. As many parties may seek out the same domain name to be associated with their particular company, organization or web site, it is often common for a domain name that incorporates a particular company or organization name to already be in use and registered to another party. Thus, a party may have to adopt some near variation on their company or organization name in order to incorporate it into a domain name that is actually available for registration. These “close” variations in domain names often make it difficult for a user to specify the domain name that is associated with the company or organizations whose web page they desire to access.
As a result, a user may use a search engine to locate a URL associated with the desired company or organization. A user must then specify key words that will be used by the search engine to generate a list of web sites. These web sites may or may not be relevant to the web site the user is looking for.
Thus, it is often difficult to access the web site of a particular party, company or organization without conducting a search engine search, specifying appropriate search terms and reviewing a listing of resources that are nowhere near relevant to the sought after information.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.